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Tomorrow, February 6th, is a big day. Sure, it’s the Superbowl, and as a die-hard Packer fan that day means a lot to me. But more importantly, 2/6/2011 marks 100 years since the birth of the Gipper, Ronald Reagan.

Now I’m not going to devote paragraph after paragraph to the man. If you are a fan of President Reagan, there are multiple commentaries and tributes to the man for you to review. And if you are not a fan of President Reagan, there are multiple commentaries and tributes to the man for you to ignore. But I’d like to take a moment to tell one of my favorite Ronald Reagan stories, that show just how quick-witted the man actually was.

The former president was telling a group once about his tumultuous days as governor of California during the rebellious sixties and early 70s. He said he had a meeting with some of the organizers of the protests. They came into his office wearing t-shirts and jeans, and some were barefoot.

Their spokesman began, “Governor, it’s impossible for your generation to understand us…. You didn’t grow up in a world of instant electronic communications, of cybernetics, of men computing in seconds what once took months, even years, or jet travel, nuclear power, and journeys into space…..”

The young man continued along this line for several minutes, making what he thought was a wonderful point, that someone that old (Reagan was not even 60 at this point) couldn’t possibly understand a world so different from the one he grew up in.

When the young man finished, Reagan said, “You’re absolutely right. Our generation didn’t have those things when we were growing up. That is why we had to invent them.”

Happy Birthday Mr. President… Oh, and Go Packers!!

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I love how you guys still love him and seem to have forgotten how unpopular he was with his base toward the end of his second term. I gotta admit though I don’t think he was as bad as I did back in the day. Time has a way of softening disapproval I suppose as well as making the heart grow fonder for those who drank the kool-aid. Jk about the inflammatory use of kool aid. He did restore national pride after Carter haters tore it down so I guess that was a good thing.